Company Stores Add Value, Higher Profits (Defining the Company Store)

The store pictured here was once known as a company store. There, in a location near an industrial facility, an employee could buy sundries at low prices. The original company store was born out of convenience for a company’s workers — and the company itself. It kept employees close by and available to work more hours. Typically, the stores were part of a company town, since there were few other choices of employment in most places at that time.

What we see today is completely different. It has changed from a convenience store to a marketing and branding tool. Today’s company store is not only a place to order company apparel and promotional items, but it also incorporates tailored direct-marketing programs — such as postcards, fliers, dimensional direct mail and more — to fit the consumer’s target profile. You can even order those ever-so-necessary business cards.

The modern store also helps solve contemporary business dilemmas created in the last few decades as companies have grown. During this time, large organizations struggled with managing multiple locations and purchasing various promotional literature, signage, handouts and print ads, all while fighting to maintain brand consistency. (Face it, who hasn’t had a run-in with the company-brand police?) Company stores help the sales and marketing staff enhance a company’s brand in a consistent and timely fashion.

Company stores also address challenges that arise from using different vendors. Often times, the color, logo and, ultimately, the brand were misinterpreted and misused. This was a clear sign to marketers that there was a desperate need to simplify the ordering process and successfully keep a uniformed brand image. A catalog-ordering system was developed out of this need, which assisted in keeping the brand intact. Through these catalogs, sales representatives and others could purchase items under uniform conditions. But as the computer-era began, the Internet helped to reduce those bulky catalogs and made it even easier to order branded company merchandise — no matter where in the world you were located.

Starting in the 1950s, then into the mid-90s, company stores began shifting from traditional brick-and-mortar facilities into a new idea of a branded shop. Not only do they make branded merchandise available for purchase by employees, but the “shop” can be used literally as a warehouse for the tools needed by a modern marketing and public relations department.

So, what are the benefits of offering your client a company store and how does the modern company store work? Today the world moves so fast that the look and feel of a brand are an ever-evolving, yet very crucial, part of business.